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Distraught and angry as a Toronto-area teenager in the 1970s, Jim Carrey once lived in a van after his musician father lost his day job and the family was left destitute for a few months. Carrey learned he had no appetite for poverty.

Distraught and frustrated as a young comedian in Toronto, the cutting-edge Carrey struggled to make a noisy gaggle of film industry folk laugh at a Variety Club luncheon I attended in the early 1980s. Carrey learned he had no appetite for being ignored.

Faking anger and rudely “channeling” the ghost of Andy Kaufman, a grand-standing Carrey swept all our tape recorders onto the floor during a press conference for Man in the Moon in 1999, mine included. It broke. I learned I had no appetite for Carrey’s arrogant indulgences, even when I admired and celebrated the film and his performance.

Sweet and thoughtful, Carrey played the Cannes Film Festival like a Stradivarius in 2009 while teasing his upcoming appearance in Robert Zemeckis’ innovative remake of A Christmas Carol. He also passionately defended his gay-themed drama, I Love You, Phillip Morris, which needed a kickstart. I learned I liked the friendly Carrey best.

Now, 31 years after Carrey made his TV, film and video debuts in a bunch of obscure productions in 1983, his movie career is at a crossroads. Carrey has not had a bona fide hit of his own in five years (not since A Christmas Carol). Nor even a cult favourite in the same five years (not since that excellent Phillip Morris movie).

But now he is coming full circle to the scene of one his greatest comedies. A month shy of the 20th anniversary of the debut of Dumb and Dumber, Carrey co-stars with old sidekick Jeff Daniels in Dumb and Dumber To. With the Farrelly Brothers back as co-directors, Carrey returns as Lloyd Christmas while Daniels reprises Harry Dunne. These “to” friends are still big-hearted and really stoopid. Let the dimwit games begin.

Hoping that the new movie is actually funny, we mark this occasion by looking at the Best and the Worst of the films of Jim Carrey. Hollywood is a crapshoot, so there are seven of each. But I left out a special genre — animation — because these are outliers for Carrey. He enthusiastically experimented with motion capture in A Christmas Carol and nailed the voice of the elephant in the wondrous Horton Hears a Who!